APRIL FOOL’S DAY

Will Spring Ever Come?I am writing this on April Fool’s Day and it is not a joke. Outside our window, it is sleeting. Our deck and lawn are thick with ice. It has been 13 days since the first day of Spring.

How sick of winter is everyone in Connecticut? So sick that last week in the midst my dreaded annual GYN exam, my handsome gynecologist and I talked about how we couldn’t stand…[no, not the yucky procedure we were sharing]….the weather. That’s how bad it is around here.

And because I can’t seem to settle on one topic for this week’s blog…..

ADHDIt is well known that our current president has an attention problem. At his first White House photo op with the outgoing president, Trump sat nodding at Obama’s gracious words while looking around the room, nodding at the photographers, appearing not to be listening to a word Obama was saying.

I find that these days I am having a difficult time paying attention, too. I blame it on cable television. Just now I tuned in to CNN and here’s what I found on the screen:

The central image is of four “talking heads.” Across the bottom of the screen runs a headlines crawler. A box in the lower right says “Live CNN Newsroom” and the time. Above that is an ad for a show tonight including its title, a photo, time and countdown clock. Viewers can watch, listen, know the time and make evening TV plans all at once.

No wonder we can’t concentrate.

The Joy of WritingEvery so often I find that two seemingly unrelated topics are instead two aspects of the same idea. Rereading what I wrote (above) yesterday, I find that unconsciously, the April Fool’s Day paragraphs are about a singular, obsessive focus and the ADHD section concerns the inability to focus. I have been taught that ideally “the end should kiss the beginning.” This week it appears that the end has kicked the beginning.

Have a good, focused week.

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About Alexis

Alexis Rankin Popik, author of Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate, is an award-winning short story writer whose work has appeared in The Berkshire Review and Potpourri Magazine. She has penned numerous articles about local history that have been published in Connecticut Explored and the University of Connecticut School of Law and The Hartford Seminary publications. A former union organizer, Popik traveled the country educating shipyard workers about health and safety and founded a labor-management health plan before turning to writing fiction full-time. She lives with her husband in New England.